MAPS Chile

Contents

Background to Chile

The fourth report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in addition with other studies done on Chile, agree that Chile like many countries is vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Although Chile is a minor contributor to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (0.2%) the country’s emissions have been increasing since 1990. At the sectoral level, the main contributor to emissions is the energy sector with ‘energy supply and use’ accounting for almost 80% of GHG emissions. This trend will continue into the future as consumption increases, especially for coal and diesel. Chile intends to undertake mitigation actions to take advantage of the environmental and social benefits including improvements in the quality of growth that can be directly derived from mitigation actions. Chile plans to achieve a 20% reduction below the ‘business as usual’ emissions growth trajectory in 2020 as projected in 2007.

Overview of MAPS Chile

Currently there are several national initiatives that are coordinated by different Ministries which relate to climate change and low carbon development in the country. The MAPS Chile project will take advantage of the potential for cooperation and information sharing between the various projects. The project aims to answer four key questions: a) What are the most efficient and effective mitigation options to comply with the international commitments on climate change? Among these, which are the most feasible and favourable to implement? b) What are the opportunities and trade-offs associated with the various mitigation options in terms of alleviating poverty, contributing to positive macro and micro economic results, and allowing Chile to gain and secure its international competitiveness? c) What are the key links between adaptation and mitigation options in the country? d)What are the key public policy measures, instruments and private initiatives that would contribute to climate change mitigation in order to enhance low carbon development?

The MAPS Chile project will develop emission trajectories through research, modelling and a simulation of results. Although the different sectors are interrelated and mostly physically interconnected, the project will cover: Electricity production and transportation, public and private transportation system, mining industry, agroforestry, residential, Commercial and Public Sector, wastes, and other industries (e.g. manufacturing, construction, cement).

For each selected sector, the results from the non-energy emission analysis will be combined with the emissions from energy modelling to provide a comprehensive set of emissions projections, related costs, benefits, and externalities.

Given the complexity and the magnitude of the required effort, this project has three phases:

Phase 1: Laying the groundwork for the project; development of BAU and RBS scenarios; analysis (strategic assessment), dissemination and communication.

The project is a government driven, participatory analysis of scenarios and options for climate change mitigation in Chile. It is a non-binding exercise which is supported by the majority of stakeholders. The key outcomes of the project include quantitative scenarios and options for mitigating climate change in Chile 2020, 2030 and 2050, a detailed analysis of potential mitigation actions by sector and an analysis of the main uncertainties. The project will contribute to the design of a low carbon emissions development strategy.

Where are we now?

MAPS Chile launched on 15 March and held its first Scenario Building Team (SBT) meeting in March 2012 which was attended by over 50 representatives from the public and private sector, academia and NGOs. This was an introductory session which included elaboration on the SBT roles, processes and the rules of the game.

The MAPS Chile team has currently prepared and released three tenders: 1) State of the Art Climate Modelling which will be a cross-sectorial study energy, industry, waste, transport and urbanisation, forest and agriculture. This has been appointed to Maisa Rojas from from the Geophysics Department of the University of Chile, 2) A Base data survey to establish the required by science scenario, 3) The Business as Usual (BAU) scenarios for 7 sectors (reference year: 2007). A BAU baseline for 2012 will also be released to tender in the next two months, 4) The first round of Technical Working Group meetings (TWG1) was held in July 2012, with eight working groups, each of them based on a specific sector to be modeled plus an additional group to discuss issues of integration.

MAPS Chile held the second SBT in August 2012 and the members discussed amongst other issues the progress made so far with regards to the following studies: State of the art climate modeling and the base data survey to establish the required by science scenario.

The third SBT breakfast meeting also took place in September 2012. More than 20 SBT members, together with project staff, attended the meeting. After summarising the main results of SBT2, the research team presented key issues relevant to the second phase of the project- the elaboration of a reference scenario 2012 and of several mitigation scenarios. Issues such as how to cluster the sectors (for the purpose of organizing the next call for tenders) and the pool of possible mitigation measures to be considered were proposed by the team and discussed by the SBT.